James Kirkup is The Telegraph's Executive Editor (Politics). He was previously the Telegraph's Political Editor and has worked at Westminster since 2001.

George Osborne defines the next general election: will you vote for more cuts?

I wrote earlier that the Autumn Statement would change the Conservative strategy for the next election. It will, but politically, it will actually do much more than that.

George Osborne's decision (forced on him, to be sure) to announce two years of deep spending cuts in 2015-17 will frame the next general election, whenever it comes.

Until today, all parties' election thinking had implicitly rested on the expectation/hope that by 2015, the worst would be over and we'd be squabbling about how to start spending the proceeds of an emerging economic recovery. Mr Osborne has killed that optimism stone dead today, by making clear that what lies on the other side of the next election is just more austerity. (Indeed, the implied cuts in departmental spending for 2015-17 will be bigger than any in the current four-year spending round.)

Now, we know a little about the meaning of all this, but much remains unclear. One thing we do know is that the Conservatives must now fight the next election promising to enact Mr Osborne's cuts. David Cameron (assuming he's still there, eh George?) will offer himself as the leader of the Sound Money party, the responsible manager who started the national economic repair job and should now get a second term to see it through to completion.

But what of the other parties? Will the Lib Dems, who are today signed up to those 2015-17 cuts, really fight the election promising to enact them?

And what about Labour? Will Ed Miliband (assuming he's still there, eh Yvette?) draw a Brown-style dividing line and run on a promise to cut less? Or will Labour decide on a Tony Blair-style pledge to live with the fiscal plans of the Government he proposes to replace?

It'll be a good while before we know the answers to any of these questions. As ever, what will decide those answers will be public opinion. And that is the most interesting question of all: after five years of Coalition austerity, will Britain be prepared to vote for more?